Curricular Practical Training (CPT) Process for Summer Internship

If the internship is related to your research work, you (F1 student) may get CPT to work as an intern in a company. This page describes the basic steps. Marquette sees CPT as a course (1-3 credits). So, you have to register for the course. You have to get a permission number (from department office) for the course to register. For each credit you are going to register, you are allowed to work for at most 100 hours. So, if you work 40 hours a week for 3 months, you must register for at least 3 credits. And if Summer courses are not supported by your scholarship, the money for the registration has to be paid from your own pocket. In the CPT request form (2nd link in the page), you have to get signature from your academic advisor, from the internship coordinator (for Summer 2012 MSCS department's coordinator was Dr. Madiraju), and from your employer (for internship). It is better to get signature from the employer and academic advisor first and then take signature from the internship coordinator. If your employer is nonlocal, you may need to send a scanned copy of the advisor signed form to your employer and then get a scanned copy signed by your employer and then get signature from the internship coordinator. The internship coordinator needs to know who your employer is, employer's address, phone number, email address, how many hours per week you will be working, details of work responsibilities, and the start and end date of your employment. Usually all these information will be included in the offer letter you receive from your employer. So, submit this offer letter to the internship coordinator while you get signature from him/her. Make sure that the end date of your employment is before the beginning of the Fall semester.
Now, you have your CPT request form (one copy has fresh-ink signatures from your advisor and coordinator and the other copy has adviser-coordinator-employer signatures probably scanned because your employer may be nonlocal), the offer letter, the print-out of the email in which your employer sent you the offer letter, your I20, and your passport. Make an appointment with one of the Office of International Education (OIE) advisers (Here get the names). On the date of the appointment take all the documents mentioned before and meet with OIE adviser. It will not take more than 10 minutes to get approval. The OIE adviser will ask a few easy questions and will provide you with a new I20 (which includes the work approval for internship) along with the old one and you are done!